Yesterday, Spectator editor Andrew Neil Tweeted his disappointment in the UK’s solar power performance after it was announced that a coal-fired power plant was put on standby to provide more electricity.
One reason for the use of coal was that “Last Thursday the North Sea Link interconnector (between Britain and Norway) tripped losing 1.4GW of power just before lunchtime,” according to Charlotte Johnson, chief of staff & global head of markets at KrakenFlex.
Being unaware of wider electricity supply problems, Neil seemed to be blaming the supply issues on the lack of solar output. Neil claimed that solar was “generating only 1.4GW (5%) despite 15GW installed capacity” without providing a source for this statistic.
Neil posted this at 09.17, yet at 09.35, the Gridwatch website was reporting that solar accounted for 6.6GW or 20% of electricity production.
The journalist had obviously been reading a Telegraph article which negatively reported on the UK’s renewable energy industry – part of a general trend in the paper’s reporting. Recently, they have published a number of articles attacking the efficacy of heat pumps as a solution to the UK’s gas dependency.
In an article yesterday, Telegraph journalists Melissa Lawford, Chris Price and Benedict Smith claimed that higher June temperatures “made solar panels too hot to work efficiently”.
Read more: SolarPowerPortal
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